Jerry Hinnen

Rex, I wouldn't call the defense's season-to-date "dominant," and certainly not the subpar effort vs. ASU. But I think their performance against MSU earned that label, for the yards-per-play reason I mentioned. More generally, when you hold one of 2009's best rushing teams to just one scoring drive longer than 20 yards in their place on Thursday night, I think that's pretty doggone good.

Remember, too, that because of all of Auburn's quick-strike scores, that ASU game was a huge outlier in terms of the number of plays and possessions. That contributes a lot to the low scoring and total defense rankings, especially when we're only talking about a sample size of two games and a LOT of teams have played FCS teams even worse than ASU. In yards-per-play--not perfect, but arguably a better metric for Auburn's defense than the total or scoring rankings--Auburn comes in in a tie for 17th. They'll need to play more at the Miss. St. level than the ASU level, no question, but the sky is hardly falling at this point.

I completely agree that Auburn needs to open up the offense and work harder to get the ball to Adams and Zachery--I wrote as much this week at the blog--but I also think one game makes it a little soon to declare that Auburn's not running the Malzahn offense any more. If we're still seeing 6-minute drives early in the second half against Carolina or Arkansas, OK, then, let's start saying it's over, but not after one unproductive half.